At the upper end of this dungeon . . . . the Englishman first beheld him, sitting on an iron bedstead, to which he was chained by a heavy chain. by Edward G. Dalziel. Wood engraving. From Dickens's "The Italian Prisoner" (complete text on this site), chapter twenty-eight in The Uncommercial Traveller. [Click on image to enlarge it.]

Passage Realised

Some years ago, this man at my feet, whose over-fraught heart is heaving as
if it would burst from his breast, and whose tears are wet upon the dress I wear, was a
galley-slave in the North of Italy. He was a political offender, having been concerned in
the then last rising, and was sentenced to imprisonment for life. That he would have died
in his chains, is certain, but for the circumstance that the Englishman happened to visit
his prison.

It was one of the vile old prisons of Italy, and a part of it was below the
waters of the harbour. The place of his confinement was an arched under-ground and
under-water gallery, with a grill-gate at the entrance, through which it received such
light and air as it got. Its condition was insufferably foul, and a stranger could hardly
breathe in it, or see in it with the aid of a torch. At the upper end of this dungeon, and
consequently in the worst position, as being the furthest removed from light and air, the
Englishman first beheld him, sitting on an iron bedstead to which he was chained by a
heavy chain. His countenance impressed the Englishmen as having nothing in common with the
faces of the malefactors with whom he was associated, and he talked with him, and learnt
how he came to be there. [137]

Commentary

On 13 October 1860 Dickens published this mixed form of
propaganda/sketch/short fiction/essay and autobiographical/historical/journalistic account
of the Italian patriot Giovanni Carlavero (Dickens's pseudonym for Sanvanero, whose story
also resembles that another, more recent political prisoner, Carlo Poerio) in
All the Year Round, reflecting
Dickens's personal support for the nationalist Giuseppe Mazzini and the popular liberal
cause of Risorgimento or Italian
Reunification and liberation from Austrian and Papal tyranny. In Dickens' Journalism, Slater and Drew point out that, in this article,
Dickens seems to be abandoning the persona of the Uncommercial Traveller, maintained for
seven months already in 1860, in order to narrate more convincingly and without the
Traveller's customary aloofness and cynicism "what is said to be 'strictly a true story'
from the period of his Italian travels and residence in 1844-5" (190). The short story
"The Italian Prisoner" solicits the
sympathy of Dickens's broad middle-class readership for the plight of the Italian people
by emphasising the suffering of Carlavero and the nobility of the English aristocrat who
attempts to intervene on Carlavero's behalf, Lord Dudley Coutts. The manifest sympathy of
the English first-person narrator
makes him effectively more than a mere commentator — a kind of secondary protagonist
— even though he interacts with the prisoner only some years after Carlavero's
release, and retails the sympathetic Englishman's impressions second-hand.

In composing the prison scene from Dickens's narration of it, Dalziel sharply
contrasts the respectable middle-class garb of the English humanitarian, the imposing
uniform of the prison functionary, and the white shirt of the prisoner, his hair
dishevelled and his face blackened. A pillar of the establishment, inflexible and
unbending with respect to the treatment of the "recommended" inhabitant of the gloomy cell, the pillar-like
official represents the repressive system against which Carlavero has rebelled and which
the Englishman reviles. The vaulting of the cell creates a corona around the
prisoner's head (the spikes implying a crown of thorns), while flaring torch highlights
his clothing and the faces of his visitors. That the cell is underground is suggested by
there being little light penetrating the iron bars (upper left). The illustrator has
utilised the overwhelming darkness effectively to suggest the apparent hopelessness of the
prisoner's situation, while the torch (associated with the English liberal) raises the
prospect of assistance, and perhaps even the light of freedom, as in Beethoven's Fidelio. Although Dalziel does not indicate the cancerous tumour on
the prisoner's neck, he makes the prisoner's expression a subtle blend of mistrust and
numbness — he seems almost incapable of speech. None of the figures betrays much
expression, although the turnkey takes a certain clinical interest in his charge.

Scanned image by Philip V.
Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]